The above is from a Gallup poll. And the questions are a combination of President Obama's actions and proposals regarding guns. And yet, what we hear are the loudest voices of a distinct minority: the NRA as represented by its leadership, the crazies in Congress, and the paranoiacs at large in our midst.
It's in this context that I find particularly amusing John Boehner's latest bit of extracosmic thinking, when he claimed Barack Obama's agenda is to annihilate the Republican party. (One can hope!) It could be true, in effect if not in specific intent: as long as today's Republican party is so out of step with the needs and wants of America, then by proposing reasonable, popular, and necessary actions in all areas of our national discourse, our president will, merely because of reality, expose teabaggRs for the regressive and destructive actors that they are. If today's Republican party is heading toward annihilation, it's not by any actions the president is taking; it's by their own intransigent refusal to think beyond their most selfish self-interest; not to mention their theocratic intentions.
On the other hand, I don't see signs of it actually occurring. Because of their gerrymandering and on-going efforts at suppressing and degrading the votes of their opposition, they'll keep sending enough representatives of the Bachmann/Gohmert/Broun variety to derail progressive legislation, if not to advance their own. Which means, as I see it, their self destruction will coincide with their destruction of everything else.
